More... 3.3 Based on the different ways in which they affect the brain, psychoactive drugs can be divided into four main groups: depressants (e.g., alcohol and sedatives), stimulants (e.g., nicotine and ecstasy), opioids (e.g., morphine and heroin), and hallucinogens (e.g., PCP and LSD).
So is there any place in the United States an 18-year-old can escape the uniform 21-year-old drinking age? For a while, Louisiana was a safe haven for thirsty teens. To comply with the letter of the national drinking age law, the state passed a law that made it illegal to buy alcohol if you were under 21.
Full disclosure: I grew up in New York City when the drinking age was 18. Of course people were also being drafted at that age into the U.S. military and sent to Vietnam, so there was a certain logic in treating 18 as the official entry into adulthood. Like the New York of my youth, the minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) is 18 in Alberta, Manitoba and QuÃ©bec, and 19 in the rest of Canada. The year in which a young person âturns legalâ can be a perilous one.